Leo Tolstoy

Prince Vasíli always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a stale part.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

What a misfortune⁠—he has not any space! And, strange to say, space has been lacking for fifteen centuries, to prove that Christ, whom we profess, said something different from what He said.

And all this nasty folly is prepared, not simply, nor with kindly merriment, but with anger and brutal cruelty.

I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith.

Mother Matryóna can see through a brick wall three feet thick.

“No. Pushing oneself in where you are not needed, does not prove you to be brave.”

All were glad, the plants, the birds, the insects, and the children. But men, grown-up men and women, did not leave off cheating and tormenting themselves and each other.

But what energy and tenacity! With what determination it defended itself, and how dearly it sold its life!

Everyone laughed, not at Márya Dmítrievna’s answer but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who had dared to treat Márya Dmítrievna in this fashion.

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.

“Christ’s teaching is no good, because it is not adapted to an industrial and commercial age,” naively says Ingersoll, thus expressing with absolute precision and naivete what the refined and cultured men of our time think about Christ’s teaching.

As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused the conception conveyed by a word, with the more aplomb and self-assurance do people use that word, pretending that what is understood by it is so simple and clear that it is not worth while even to discuss what it actually means.

Ambition, love of power, covetousness, lasciviousness, pride, anger, and revenge⁠—were all respected.

Mother Matryóna’s been ground, and ground again, ground fine!

You begin to understand the defenders of Sevastopol; without knowing why, you begin to feel ashamed of yourself before this man.

Then he had looked on his spirit as the I; now it was his healthy strong animal I that he looked upon as himself.

A rope should be long but a speech short

“If I were Tsar I would never go to war,” said Nesvítski, turning away.

Everyone had something to say in censure or ridicule of the luckless Madame Maltishtcheva, and the conversation crackled merrily, like a burning faggot-stack.